Fidelity

A commitment I believe in.

Most of us have a hot button (or two). One of mine is having a commitment to fidelity. A breach of fidelity in a marriage need not involve a physical gesture. No, indeed, emotional infidelity can trump any touch. When I was a much younger person, my family life combusted. I witnessed a breakup so heart-wrenching, I realized for the first time how powerful the game of love can be, especially for the loser. In fact, we were all losers - my mother, my two brothers and their families, and poor little old unmarried me.

For my mother, surpassing thirty two years of marriage felt like reaching a bomb shelter at the edge of a field, some kind of safety check-point where she could finally breathe. But the heart is a tricky beast, and there was to be no rest for the weary. My mother experienced rejection at a time when she looked forward to retirement with her husband and buying a house on the Cape.

My father had other ideas. A woman that he had known when he was a teenager had looked him up, finding it difficult to pick up the pieces on her own as she exited her own failed marriage. My Dad was her ticket back to normalcy (and a provider to boot).

So there I was, only a few months from leaving for college, and my life felt like a snow globe, never knowing when the storm would pass and the night would be still. My nuclear family life was never the same, and I can say with full disclosure, never truly good again. An awful lot more went down in the months that followed the revelation of my Dad's infidelity. I'll leave that for another time. Through it all, my takeaway has never left me. I feel unwavering disdain for cheating behavior, and I don’t believe in excuses. I do believe, however, in the idea that some people move on from one another, and cease to make their relationship a priority. Please notice that I did not say that I believe that people fall out of love. I'm just not sure I believe in that.